Stealing gold

Downtown eastside, Vancouver - I've got my window open a crack to preserve the cheese sitting on the sill of my room in a sweet, homey hotel on Hastings, east of Main.[rssbreak]

I can hear the sounds of the street, trains and the port, but this sudden prolonged noise is new. I recognize it from war movies and the Toronto Air Show. These must be the fighter jets practising up to protect the Games.

People who can afford to have fled Vancouver as police, military and security forces of every stripe invade in an unprecedented show of force.

When the 14,000 reporters have all gone home, the Olympic agenda will continue to play out on the Downtown Eastside. Fifteen hundred rooms for low-income people have been lost, homelessness has tripled, and luxury renos are speeding ahead. In the time I've been here, real estate signs have gone up on several buildings on Hastings.

But the resistance is inspired. So much so that the city's removal of protest posters has become a major Olympic event. On Friday night, February 12, thousands march on the official opening at BC Place, organized by some 50 different social action groups calling themselves the Welcoming Committee.

There we stand outside in the rain, while inside, fake snow is falling on an opening ceremony of monumental cheesiness. My favourite sign is something those who live on the street know well. "Supremacy is a low choice. Humility takes courage."

The annual memorial march for the many murdered women from the Downtown Eastside (February 14) is first denied a permit by the city and then rerouted according to VANOC's demands.

For the first time ever, the sacred salmon did not run up the Fraser River this year. Their spawning beds were destroyed by gravel mining for the highway to the Olympics. Only a party pooper would care! Rowdy Olympic fans at the many Oktoberfest-style biergartens make it clear their right to "party!" is all that matters. They know the city belongs to them.

But not all of it. On February 7, we gather 1,200 strong at the Japanese Hall on Alexander for the Poverty Olympics. The torch for these Games was carried throughout BC, and participants gathered stats and stories en route. At the Hall, the mood is festive and, as at all protest events around here, there's free food.

The slogan is "End poverty - it is not a game." A native spiritual leader speaks of a world destroyed by "greed and fear." Our MCs are Chewy the Rat and Itchy the Bedbug. The declaration of the Downtown Eastside as a "free speech zone" brings a rousing cheer. Itchy says the "Owe-lympics" cost $6 billion while the Poverty Olympics came in at about $6.

Many sing the woman warrior song as the toilet-plunger torch with a plastic bag flame is carried in.

Facts and history whiz by. In the 1960s, people here battled a highway, then they fought for an end to the murders of local women. Gentrification and an HIV rate higher than Botswana's are current threats. The safe injection site on Hastings is once more under attack by the man who suspended Parliament so he could come to this town and show off.

Natives make up 2 per cent of the population of Vancouver but 32 per cent of the homeless. The "most liveable city in the world" has the lowest minimum wage in Canada and the highest real estate prices.

Brute force backs up the official Olympics, while good grace and humour animate the Poverty Olympics. A shower of Olympic bills flutters over the crowd to the strains of We're In The Money. The funds spent on the ecologically disastrous highway to Whistler could have housed 5,000 people.

The first event is the Women's Housing Hurdles. Competitors battle to reach a home. Since 2002, 16,000 women in BC have lost welfare benefits. Ann Marie, who is on old age and disability, has been homeless for seven years. She uses two canes in the race. A potential landlord says, "I notice you have chapped lips - do you use crack?" "No, but I'd like to try it."

The Olympic legacy won't be social housing, but a network of technologies for surveillance - and public debt foreshadowing more deep cuts. People here already know who the winners and losers will be.